Comments

1
LET THE POGROM BEGIN

er, i mean: Well, that's nice.
2
CHARLOTTE?! you fucking bitch.
3
There's Ken Hutcherson!
4
I can't find a way to use it in any way useful. If you search for one field, like last name, you can't limit the results of that search by any other field. For example, I can't figure out how to search for a first name/last name.
5
This should not have happened.

Liberals, you're shooting yourselves in the foot here. Since this drama came up I have refused to sign anything for anyone period, because I don't want it in a public, searchable, search-indexed database online.

I'd never sign the hate-centric Ref 71, but I also won't sign any socially progressive things anymore either.

People who sign these should be protected.

This falls into the same vein as despicable companies that scrape police blotters and repost mugshots with full names, then charge hundreds of dollars to remove it. Perfectly legal, and perfectly stupid.

Grats all.
6
If we going to have the stupid, stupid, annoying, bogus initiative system in this state, then we're all going to be lawmakers. And if we're all lawmakers, we need this kind of openness.
7
i'm with @6: people who put these initiatives forward -- and people who indicate their support by signing them -- are acting as mini-legislators. it is and always has been a matter of public record. the searchable internet database is a novelty, and probably will have a chilling effect, but you know what? THAT'S A GOOD THING. if you can't stand by your signature, you shouldn't fucking sign.
8
@5 - If you're too afraid to stand behind your beliefs, don't sign it. Fine by me. Your cowardice is noted as typical of your side.

Now, I'm excited for them to enable the Facebook cross-reference so I can weed out some so-called friends.
9
I like that you can search by street (and then sort on address) - I now know which of my neighbors signed. No surprises there.

The sorting should be a little smarter; for instance, if you sort on last name, it should automatically apply a secondary sort of first name. And for any non-name sort (e.g., zip code), the secondary/tertiary sort (for zipcodes that are the same) should be last name/first name.

Also, where's the google map implementation? That would be great as a snapshot of geographical trends.

Geeks, the data is right there. Get on it.
10
If they uncover a lot of fraud among the signatures, will the AG go after the signature collectors?

Oh, wait, I forgot your AG is a total dick.
11
Cousin Cory? I didn't realize you were that kind of a bigot, man.
12
@5: The Supreme Court heard your arguments and dismissed them. In fact, I believe it was Justice Scalia that was the most bullish on calling people who are afraid of disclosure cowards.

Nothing notable will happen because of this. SHRUG.
13
Pretty sure the ENTIRE city of Aberdeen signed.
14
This is sure to end well.
15
@9 & 4 I'm fairly certain this a couple of people doing this on their own time... Let's just thank them for all the hard work
16
Those mother fucking liars! I sincerely hope, some way it can be proven that there is no god and that their deepest held beliefs are proven false. Because nothing would hurt them more.
17
Did illegible signatures count toward certification? If not, I'm fine with them being missing from the dataset -- could just be patriots trying to subvert the signature collection process.
19
Ooh, I spotted a woman I used to work with! Sandy, I'm a ask you about this HARD next time we pass each other on the sidewalk.
20
Found my inlaws. Figures.
22
I wish we could have this for every referendum/initiative ... and to @5 ... initiative signature lists have always been publicly available ... this wasn't something unique to Ref.71
23
Gary Lynn Dotson apparently felt so strongly about this issue that he signed twice.
24
Not signing (as far as I found):
-Joe Fuiten
-Joseph Backholm
-Tim Eyman
-Gary Randall
-Mark Driscoll

Interestin'.

Also look at the language up top. They said this was a petition about gay marriage. DOUBLE-INTERESTIN'.
25
Don't forget that some people signed and thought they were supporting equality. The signature gathers were not always honest either when they explained the petition according to some of my family.

Accepting that your information is publically available is part of the process, just as those of us who donated over a minimum amount to equality campaigns have our information available. I guess if you're uncomfortable, then don't sign and don't donate. And if you're okay with it, then prepare an answer in advance.
26
Just in time to remind those who would sign Referendum 74 that their signatures are not secret, and that we are watching.
27
I wanna send a copy to "For My Wife" to each and every one of them.

Otherwise, eh. I thought this would unleash a torrent of emotion but I can't really be bothered at this point. Eh.
28
I'm confused by some of the data. Can someone explain this:

- do a search on "university way" (no quotes), you should get two matches.
- click on a name in the second result to view the petition.

The result on the main page lists a middle name and a Seattle address.
The scanned petition shows no middle name and an entirely different Spokane address.

What's going on there?
30
My outrage-o-meter has long since expired on this.

For those that spot signers they know, they can pout and create voodoo dolls. Or they can get along with life.

After all, this vote was over two years ago and many attitudes, names, addresses, opinions, revelations have shifted after nearly three years of politics.

Use caution before flaming or peeing on their lawans, and don’t be too bitter – you’ll get wrinkles!
31
Correction to 30: Remove 'names, addresses' from third paragraph.
32
@29 - As soon as you have any evidence of any voter fraud, then I will consider spending a lot of time and effort to change the way we do things. But since I have never seen any evidence of any sort, I can only assume that you just like spending government money and changing things for the heck of it, you liberal you. Maybe we can raise taxes to fund the changes! Wee.
33
I was surprised to see my sister-in-law's mother on the list, as she didn't strike me as someone who would have signed. But then I checked the actual register where she signed, and it turns out that the address listed was the retirement center where she went to live after her memory (and her health) started to falter. In fact, everyone on that same page was a resident in this long-term care facility.

Now, granted they have the right to sign if they want, but I'm pretty sure most did not truly understand what they were putting their name on.
34
My wife found her name on the list and I assure you, we're decidedly lesbian. So there's definite fraud going on, and a report has been sent.

I'm glad this list is out, because otherwise we might never have known that her name was present.
35
Less than 6 hours and people are already finding evidence of fraud. Oh man.
36
So pleased that no one in my [ultra-conservative] family appears to be on this list.

But golly is this fun — especially checking out the Seattle residents who signed. Check out this douche/apparent signer:

https://twitter.com/#!/michaelfreimut2
http://realfreeradical.wordpress.com/201…

Economists are, reliably, the worst. Dude "loves freedom." What a joke.

37
@30 - You, outraged over anything other than people speaking up and/or potentially rocking the boat? Never!
38
@33, nice work.

For my own part: no family members on the list. My work is done here.
39
@5: If you take that attitude you're never going to be part of any referendum. If you wants to play you gots to pay.
40
I'm seeing duplicate signatures (same full name and addresses)
41

People should welcome open voting.

Eventually e-Democracy could replace representative democracy entirely.

It's already happening in the sense that issues are constantly debated and decided on social media.

42

I don't see Rob McKenna on the list...

43
The dumbass on your current cover signed (of course) as did his ugly wife. http://whosigned.org/Petition/Box_13%20-…
44
I'm relieved-- I have a couple of somewhat conservative friends/classmates from the UW, and I was worried that I would see them there. Fortunately, none of them have appeared, though in one case there was a near match (but different middle initial). I wasn't really sure what I would do if I saw a friend's name on the list-- normally I'm willing to just not talk about political disagreements, but signing a petition to deprive me of equal rights seems like it might be beyond the pale.
45
@40 - This is expected. The duplicate signatures are due to individuals signing the referendum multiple times and there are at least 2,208 individuals who did so.

We've already heard from individuals about cases of potential fraud and possible errors in the signature match process.
46
Whoo, just found 2 people I work with (so far).
47
I was not expecting to find a few people I know in the list - my uncle and this nice lady I've known since high school. To my knowledge, they have never expressed their views about homosexuality and same-sex marriage to me. So I'm kinda shocked (and a bit hurt?).
48
There's one "Daniel P. Savage" on the list. Our Dan's middle name is "Keenan" (per wikipedia), so no chance for some fun with that, sadly. There's also a Terry Miller, and a Jennifer Graves. I guess what I'm saying is make damn sure it's the real whoever before you jump down their throat.
49
Anybody know if this applies to the whole nation, or was the decision written in a way that applies only to Washington State.
I'm in Calif, and I can't find any list for prop 8.
50
@5, @22 et al - I collected a few signatures for the Sensible Washington and I-502 pot initiatives, and occasionally had people refuse to sign because of the possibility of something like this happening. Some in startup businesses who didn't want conservative funders to see them in favor of pot legalization, others paranoid the gubmint would come get them.
51
uh when i search "seattle" i only show 2 signatures. none for "olympia". also someone said they found ken hutcherson, but i can't find him. and someone mentioned two results for searching "university way"--i only get one.

seems like this database is a bit wonky.
52
@51 - I just searched for Seattle (no quotes) and got pages and pages of results. Same with Olympia and University Way (I got the two results someone else mentioned). How are you searching? With quotes? Doesn't seem to work with that.

Also, searching with a combination of last name and first name doesn't work. So to find Ken Hutcherson, you have to just search Hutcherson (the more unique of the two). That is definitely a flaw of this system, but this website is better than nothing...
53
Funny, I found a certain gay State Representative's family member who signed it. Also found several duplicates.

One thing I hope can be done would be outreach to the non-English-speaking community to give them a chance to verify that they were not misled into signing something they did not actually support.
54
Purocuyu (#49): different states, different laws. In California, the names submitted on initiative petitions do not become public. This is just another problem with the initiative process. While I agree that those who sign petitions should do so knowing that their names will be disclosed, the Supreme Court did not hold it as a requirement, merely that a state may have a law that the names of petition signers will be disclosed.
55
Multi-field search/filtering of the Referendum 71 database just went live at http://www.whosigned.org

@51 and @52 - we don't expect quotation marks and since this is a "word-wheel" filter/search it continues to refine the result set as people type additional characters. Pause for about a second in typing a name and it will update with results for what you've typed so far.

@52 - Now you can search across multiple fields simultaneously.
56
One of those "I'm a real estate tycoon because I bought Seattle houses in the mid 2000s then lost everything when I was beset by Notices of Trustee Sales once I had to pay principal on my empire" nitwits signed. His address given on the referendum signature sheet was repossessed, along with two other properties, by the bank last year.
57
By the way, they've spiffed up the website (not that anybody's looking at this comment thread any more): Now you can filter by first name, middle name, last name, address, city, state, AND zip.
58
And just to point out - this is no more revealing than a campaign button, yard sign, or donation which are not searchable for most things in someone's google map.

You can't legislate in secret anymore - you sign it people have a right to know that you signed it and you have a responsibility to stand up for your opinion.

I was personally quite pleased to find how few did sign it in my entire zip code and and the only relatives that did are the ones that think Obama was born in Kenya, i.e. I wasn't shocked.

This sort of thing is the natural antidote to the 'sign anything' people that allow anyone with deep enough pockets for paid signature gatherers to get anything on the ballot. Signing is speaking up, and if you do then don't be surprised that you are heard.
59
I don't sign anything on the street anymore for security purposes. I am very sad about this, having grown up being an activist in San Francisco CA where some kind of petition was on every street corner for decades...and I signed most believing that everything deserves consideration, and less the prevailing majority rule.
If I were to sign something though, I would expect that it be public information, whether it be easy to obtain or not. Full disclosure, and the ability to find out if you are a victim of petition fraud, is a good idea, in my opinion.
While D.C., and therefore democracy, is a 'broken' as I have ever seen it due to private and public greed and the extreme partisanship that promotes, I won't endorse anything that breaks it further. Secrecy would break it further.
60
I can't wait to create such a list for any gun control ballot measure petitions that might come up. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.

Please wait...

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